Edmonton is on the cusp of signing another big-name architect with Montreal’s Saucier + Perrotte asked to design the $180-million Lewis Farms Recreation Centre.

Multiple sources at city hall have confirmed the contract was offered to the firm, which is ranked among the best in Canada. The final contracts are still being signed, but the news is buzzing through the local architecture community.

“They’re known for doing really detail-oriented design that plays on space and light and material. They’ve done award-winning work that’s been recognized internationally.”

“They’re certainly one of the biggest names in Canada,” said Robert Labonte, an architect and vice-chair of the Edmonton Design Committee, which provides advice to the City of Edmonton on urban design principles, guidelines and policies. “I’m really pleased.”

Edmonton has been slowly emerging as a centre for high-quality design, mostly since former mayor Stephen Mandel made his famous “no more crap” comment in 2005.

Since then, the city has held design competitions for park pavilions, sponsored local design awards and changed the bidding requirements for major city projects to favour firms that win peer recognition. Now local firms often seek national industry leaders to bid with them on libraries, recreation centres and other civic projects.

Saucier + Perrotte has been offered the Lewis Farms contract with local firm Architecture Tkalcic Bengert. It will be the Montreal firm’s first project in Alberta. Its closest work is the pharmacy building at Vancouver’s University of British Columbia, which won a series of national and international awards. It was inspired by the shape of a tree and has large atria drawing sunlight deep into the building.

Carol Belanger, Edmonton’s city architect, said many people don’t realize what other big names have recently been signed.

Toronto’s Teeple Architects designed the Clareview Recreation Centre and is working on the downtown library, and Denmark’s Schmidt Hammer Lassen designed the Highlands Library. They all partnered with local firms.

Andre Perrotte, partner at Saucier + Perrotte, said the firm is excited to start the design process. It bid on the project because it had been hearing about renewed interest in quality design in Edmonton. Saucier + Perrotte had also recently designed two sports facilities in Quebec and were attracted by the way Edmonton makes recreation centres into town centres for the community, combining multiple sports and recreation activities with libraries and even schools.

The land on the west edge of the city and the scale of the project are inspiring, Perrotte said. “It should be at the scale of land art. It’s almost more than the scale of a building,” he said of the project that includes sports fields around the pool, gym, library, arenas and school.

The land has isolated pockets of trees, which he would love to incorporate into an enclosed courtyard, if possible. “So you can look out at a space that has the summer or the winter captured. It creates a rich context,” he said. “With nature, that’s always something we like to do.”

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